Steve Field remembers the awesomely ramshackle South Bank at Molineux

I think it was the hero’s driving-instructor father in Gregory’s Girl who enthused over the advantages of learning to drive in a new town. He might have been right, too, but it’s bloody awful growing up in one. They are soulless and sterile, and basic demographics dictate that their football teams are a long way down the evolutionary scale. If you want anything remotely resembling a top match you are obliged to travel to the nearest proper town. In my case, Wolverhampton.

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Hans Segers, a defendant in the football betting trials, has told his story. Matthew Roche, present in court, is unimpressed

For Hans Segers to put his name to a book on the two 1997 Winchester match-rigging trials is a little like Torquay’s chief air raid warden penning a per­s­onal history of the Second World War. Segers was a bit-player in the affair and this is reflected in a thin and disappointing book which reveals little about “soccer’s trial of the century”.

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Like so many players, Neil Wills made no provision for his retirement. Now it's got him worrying about death

According to Marianne Faithfull, it was at the age of 37 that Lucy Jordan realised she would never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. According to my brother Clive, he was a mere two years older than that when he realised that if he didn’t stop playing football, his hamstrings would exp­lode. This terrified me be­cause hitherto I had always assumed I would play football for ever. I suddenly realised that – all genetics being equal – at 32 I probably only had seven years to go. For the first time in my life, I faced the grisly prospect of retirement.

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Tony Christie describes an odd encounter at a public exhibition of the FA Cup

It was in the North Country that I encountered him. At Doctor Pit Welfare Park, Bedlington, on a night when the darkening sky sat heavy on the ancient chimneys and the air was silent save for the occasional deranged hoot from a flock of Northern League urchins which had alighted in the blackness behind the away dug-out. Before a silken banner of richest cerulian blue and ivory embroidered with the runic slogan “AXA”, upon a velvet cloth there sat a great chalice of burnished silver.

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Some regular WSC contributors weigh up the best and worst things to have happened to football in 1998, and look ahead to 1999

Ian Plenderleith

Ups
– Soaring wages in the Premier League – it makes me feel warm inside to watch players and know at the same time that they will be secure in their old age.

– England’s World Cup exit – God save us eternally from Englishmen on top of the world.

– Scotland fans once again annoying the English by showing them how to enjoy a football tournament.

Downs
– The desecration of once-wonderful European club competitions.

– The failure of self-appointed fan-of-the-people David Mellor to drown in his own grease.

– Overall, too much hype and too little substance.

Hope
That football will eat itself and then we can all do something worthwhile with our spare time.

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